May 28, 2020 Plex brings together all the media that matters to you. Your personal collection will look beautiful alongside stellar streaming content. Enjoy Live TV & DVR, a growing catalog of great web shows, news, and podcasts. It's finally possible to enjoy all the media you love in a single app, on any device, no matter where you are.
Some DNLA software aka. UPnP software includes the ability to 'transcode' video and/or audio files from one format to another. So if you have a mixture of DNLA clients which do not all support the same format it can convert the files for those that need it. You may want to take this in to consideration when choosing a DNLA package for your Mac.
Best Media Server Software For Mac
Before I get on to DNLA I would say that DNLA is old, poorly supported, poorly featured and I would advise if possible to avoid it. There are other approaches which you may decide are better for you but if not then move on to the DNLA answers below.
Firstly, other non-DNLA approaches. The premier approach for doing multi-room audio is to buy a Sonos system. With this you either buy Sonos speakers e.g. Play:3 or you buy a Sonos Connect which allows you to plug in to an existing amplifier. Sonos supports all the audio formats supported by iTunes including Apple Lossless which is going to be the best format to use if possible. While Sonos is the market leader there are other brands offering similar solutions. Examples of other similar systems to Sonos include Logitech Squeezebox, Roku SoundBridge (discontinued), an Apple TV3 or TV4, etc. All these support Apple Lossless and all allow different rooms to play different tracks at the same time.
A second approach is to use Apple's AirPlay standard, many AV Receivers now support AirPlay if you have a network interface on your AV Receiver which these days is either standard or an option on most. iTunes would then stream directly to the AV Receiver using the AirPlay standard.
A third similar approach is to get one or more AirPort Express WiFi base-stations, these have an audio out connector, you AirPlay from iTunes to the AirPort Express and it outputs via its audio connector to the attached audio device which could be speakers or an AV Receiver.
Now there is a limitation with AirPlay, a single iTunes can only output via AirPlay the same content to one or more AirPlay destinations, if you want to play multiple different music tracks at the same time then this is where Sonos and similar solutions win hands down. The iTunes however can be a Mac, or Windows, or an iPhone, or an iPad.
Media Server Software For Mac
Moving on to DNLA. You are probably going to find many DNLA servers for the Mac are either discontinued, or semi-discontinued in that they have not had a recent update and therefore may have problems with newer versions of OS X, or only work with some clients, or do not do Transcoding well or at all. In other words like DNLA as a whole it is rather a mess. You will therefore find that you may have to buy a commercial DNLA package although this will be still cheaper than say buying a multi-room Sonos setup. I would advise testing the trial versions, make sure to remove each before trying the next.
With no particular sentiments, have a look at the following.
After I bought my iPad, I realized I don’t really use my laptop as much anymore. This means that I really use my desktop a lot a less! Unfortunately, my desktop, which has some decent specs, is in sleep mode most of the time. I thought this was a little sad and a waste of money, so I decided to do some research and figure out some way to utilize it.
Previously, I wrote about how you can install Windows 10 on an older PC to revitalize it and that’s something that I did with my desktop. Also, I previously had written about how to automate your computer when you’re not using it to perform certain tasks. In addition to accomplishing these two tasks, I wanted the desktop to be even more useful!
After a few days of testing and playing around with software, I can now happily stream music and videos to any web browser or to my smartphone while not being at home! Since my desktop has some extra hard drives, I even turned it into a NAS, also using some free software.
Now I can FTP into my server to download/upload files and I can even use it for Time Machine backups for my Mac. Sweet! So here’s a list of programs you can use to convert your boring old PC into something a little more useful.
FreeNAS
I bought a Synology NAS and even though I’m very happy with it, I realized I can pretty much do everything I want by just installing open-source software onto my desktop! One of the coolest programs out there that I had always heard about, but never used until now, was FreeNAS. It’s basically exactly what its name says: a free NAS OS for your PC, Mac or Linux box.
It’s a very capable and powerful OS that also supports additional features via plugins. I was amazed at what I was able to do with this software. Note that if you use FreeNAS on a computer, you really can’t use that computer for anything else.
Some of the other programs I mention below run inside Windows. FreeNAS is its own OS and manages all the hard drives installed on the computer, etc.
Another thing to note is that FreeNAS is really useful if you have a desktop with several hard drives and a at least 4GB of RAM. The hard drives don’t have to be super fast or giant in size, but the whole point of using FreeNAS is to store files and then to either stream those files or utilize them in some other way.
To get your started on your way, check out these FreeNAS guide articles from Lifehacker and Engadget. They walk you through all the steps to setup the NAS and how to setup all the extra functionality like streaming, downloading and more.
Kodi.tv
One of the best ways to convert a computer into a media center, Kodi.tv is an open-source project that can pretty much play all of the popular audio and video formats. It can even play direct DVD and Blu-ray rips, which is really nice.
You can stream any of your media around your house or across the Internet. You can also control the whole gig with a remote control and enjoy a ton of additional features with their large set of add-ons.
Kodi.tv is absolutely awesome, but you get the max benefit if you have a small desktop. I have two desktops: one giant Dell and smaller, newer HP desktop. I decided to use the HP desktop and connect it to my HDTV at home running Kodi.tv.
It works great, but I realized I could not have done it unless I had that smaller desktop. If you have an older desktop that is fairly large, then you might want to try one of the other programs mentioned below.
TVersity
TVersity is another good choice for media streaming. It used to be free, but now it seems you have to buy a license. They have a free version, but it can’t do any transcoding, which greatly reduces its utility.
You can either purchase the Media Server software or the Screen Server software. One lets you stream content from your PC to a TV or mobile device and the other lets you mirror your PC screen to a TV or mobile device.
Subsonic
For audiophiles with huge music collections, Subsonic is the best way to stream your music all over the place! Subsonic can automatically resample songs that are streaming over the Internet to a bitrate that will prevent songs from skipping or stop playing.
What’s awesome about Subsonic is that they have apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone 7, Roku and lots more. Also, in addition to streaming music, it can stream video as well. However, this program is best suited for music streaming.
VLC Media Player
Not only does VLC Media Player play just about any music or video file you can throw at it, but it also lets you stream music and videos locally over the network or over the Internet! I really never knew this even though I’ve been using the program for 5 years now!
Check out the How-to-Geek’s guide to setting up streaming using VLC. It’s not anything fancy, but it gets the job done and since most people already have it installed, it might be worth checking out. Enjoy!
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